The Best Binge-Watch of 2019 So Far Is a Soccer Documentary

Netflix's Sunderland 'Til I Die is a seriously moving story about loss and hope.

As Netflix gears up for what's already reportedly the most expensive Oscars campaign in 10 years, and with more and more original series and movies dropping seemingly by the day, some things will get lost among the noisier arrivals. That looks to be the fate suffered by Sunderland 'Til I Die, a docuseries that landed on the platform at the end of December. All the same, it's one of the best binge-watches on the site right now, and it's by no means just for soccer fans.

The eight-part series documents the 2017-2018 season of Sunderland AFC, a big name in English football. Relegated from the cash-flooded Premier League to the second tier of English football, the Championship, Sunderland begins the season reeling from a heartbreaking loss of status, not to mention revenue streams, attention, and all their good players. Then, (and note this is a mild spoiler alert for those treating Sunderland like a dramatized show) the team was relegated again at the end of the season, finding themselves in the English third tier, rather confusingly named... League One.

But before all that, there needs to be context, and stakes. Sunderland is not just a team. It's a city—a rather miserable city in the eyes of the rest of the country. Once an important industrial hub, it's a town beset with class issues, a crumbling infrastructure, and many living beneath the poverty line. The documentary goes a bit too far in suggesting football is all this town has to cling onto, but it's an important backdrop to Sunderland's doomed attempt to win back immediate promotion to the Premier League.

For better or worse, the sports teams we love have far more than just an emotional impact on our lives. In the United States, city governments and taxpayers are held hostage by owners threatening to leave town and find a metropolis more accommodating to their cutthroat stadium deals. In the U.K., West Ham United's move from the historic Green Street in East London to the airport hanger-like Olympic Stadium in the much more affluent Stratford continues to affect the team's former home's economy. An iconic restaurant, Nathan's Eels and Pies, had lines around the block every matchday for 80 years on Green Street. It closed earlier this year.

The point of all this, the show argues, is that these are not just the trials and tribulations of very well-compensated athletes doing their jobs every day. Every goal, every fuck-up, every loss: they're all felt by more people than just the eleven men on the pitch and the several thousand crammed into the stands. We get to meet the staff at Sunderland, for starters, a group of people who make the whole thing tick, the team's ever-smiling superfan chef being a true highlight of the show. Plus there's no shortage of corporate intrigue at play. In one particularly thrilling episode, the January transfer window brings hope and promise as Sunderland have the opportunity to buy some new players, and drop some dead weight while they're at it—but only if the owner agrees to fund the transactions, and the dead weight decides to leave. It's thriller-style ticking clock of an episode sandwiched between stories of human grit, and it's got a gut punch of an ending.

While the immediate premise of Sunderland 'Til I Die might be unfamiliar, it's worth a commitment. This is a sad but hopeful and, more importantly, very real look at a team, a city, and a culture struggling not only with the daily grind, but with the idea that they may not fit in at all anymore.